The third century

1. The sensible use of thoughts and things gives us dispassion, love and knowledge, while the senseless use gives want of restraint, hatred and ignorance.

2. “Thou hast prepared a table before me.” The “table” here means active virtue, since it is prepared by Jesus Christ against those who afflict us; the “oil” with which the mind is anointed means the contemplation of created things; God’s “cup” means the knowledge of God; His “mercy” is the Word of God and God, since by His becoming man He is with us all the days of our life, until He has sought out all who are to be saved, as He sought out Paul. The “house” means the Kingdom, in which all the saints dwell; “length of days” is eternal life (Ps. 22:5–6).

3. Sins happen to us through the wrong use of the powers of the soul, that is, of reason, of desire and of anger. The wrong use of the power of reason is ignorance and thoughtlessness; of the powers of anger and desire, hatred and want of restraint. But their good use is knowledge, prudence, love and dispassion. This being so, among the things created by God and existing there is nothing evil.

4. Evil is not food but gluttony; not the bearing of children but fornication; not money but the love of money; not fame but the love of honour. And since this is so, there is nothing evil except the evil use, which comes from the mind’s negligence about the working of nature (that is, about the powers of the soul and their good direction).

5. Thoughtless anger, unreasoning desire, rash imagining — this is the evil that exists in the demons, says blessed Dionysius; but thoughtlessness, unreason and rashness in reasoning creatures are the result of losing the power of discernment, of reason and of modest care. And one can lose something only after having had and possessed it. So there was a time when in them there reigned both the power of discernment, and reason, and modest care. If this is so, then the demons were not evil by their nature; but through the evil use of their natural powers they became evil.

6. One passion breeds want of restraint, another hatred, and another want of restraint and hatred together.

7. Gluttony and the love of tasty food are the cause of defilement; the love of money and the love of honour, of hatred for one’s neighbour; while their mother, self-love, is the cause of both.

8. Self-love is a passionate and thoughtless love of the body. Opposed to it are love and self-restraint. It is clear that whoever has self-love has all the other passions too.

9. “No man,” says the apostle, “ever yet hated his own flesh” (Eph. 5:29). But in spite of this he “keeps it under and brings it into subjection” (1 Cor. 9:27), giving it only “food and raiment” (1 Tim. 6:8), and only because this is necessary for life. So, without passion, people love the body and, as a servant of God, feed and warm it so as to keep it from exhaustion.

10. Whoever loves someone tries by every means to please him. So whoever loves God certainly strives to please Him; while whoever loves the body acts to gratify it.

11. Pleasing to God are love, dispassion, knowledge and prayer. But pleasing to the body are gluttony, want of restraint and everything like this. Therefore “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). But “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:24).

12. When the mind strives toward God, then it subdues the body and gives it nothing but what is necessary for life; but when the mind inclines toward the body, then it becomes a slave of its passions and “makes provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:14).

13. If you want to be free from thoughts, heal the passions — and you will be able to drive them out of the mind too. In the fight with the passion of fornication, fast, keep vigil, toil and be alone; in the time of anger and despondency count as nothing both fame and obscurity and the other earthly things; in the time of remembrance of wrongs, pray for those who have offended you — and you will be set free.

14. Do not become like the weakest of people; rather make progress in the commandment of love. When, instead of becoming like people who have fallen into the abyss of pride, you make progress in love, then you reach the summit of humility.

15. If you keep exactly the commandment of love for your neighbour, then why do you plant in yourself the bitterness of offence against him? Is it not clear that you prefer what is passing to love and because of this declare war on your brother?

16. Gold is desirable to people not so much out of need as because many gratify their sensuality by means of it.

17. There are three causes of the love of riches: sensuality, love of honour and unbelief. Stronger than the first two is unbelief.

18. The sensual man loves money in order to enjoy himself by means of it; the honour-loving man, in order to gain a name; and the unbeliever, in order to hide and keep it, since he fears either hunger, or old age, or sickness, or exile, and hopes in money more than in God, the Creator of every creature, who provides even for the last and least of beings.

19. Four kinds of people gather property: the three named above and a fourth, the good householder; it is clear that this last acquires rightly, so as not to become poor and so as to render to each according to his need.

20. Every passionate thought either rouses the desiring part of the soul, or disturbs the incensive part, or darkens the reasoning part, whereby the mind goes blind to spiritual contemplation and to the soaring of prayer. Therefore it befits a monk, especially one keeping silence, to put thoughts to death and to know and cut off the causes that breed them. And they can be known thus: the desiring part of the soul is roused by a passionate memory of a woman, and the cause of this is want of restraint in food and drink and frequent, senseless dealings with women. Hunger, thirst, vigil and solitude cut it off. The incensive part is disturbed by passionate memories of people who have offended us. The causes of this are sensuality, love of honour and gain. The passionate person is disturbed because he has either lost all this or could not get it. These are cut off if for the love of God we count these things as nothing.

21. God knows Himself and knows His creations; the holy powers too know God and know God’s creations. But the holy powers do not know God and His creations as God knows Himself and His creations.

22. God knows Himself from His blessed nature, and His creations by His wisdom, by which and in which He created everything; while the holy powers know God, who is truly above all, by partaking of divine knowledge, and His creations by means of the power of reasonable contemplation that exists in them.

23. Created things are outside the mind, while their contemplation is in the mind. But with the beginningless, boundless and unutterable God it is not so: to everything that exists through Him He gives life, well-being and immortality.

24. Of the holy God, of His goodness and wisdom, the reasoning and thinking being partakes by its very existence, by its capacity for good and by the grace of eternity. By this grace it knows God, and God’s creations — as was said above — by the all-embracing wisdom existing in created things, which is subtly reflected in the mind by means of thoughts.

25. When God in His greatest goodness brought reasoning and thinking beings out of nothing, He granted these creatures, for their covering, defence and salvation, these four divine qualities: being, eternity, goodness and wisdom. Of these the first two He granted for their being, and the last two as a moral gift: for being, being and eternity; and as a moral gift, goodness and wisdom, so that the creature might through this become a partaker of what God Himself is. That is why it is said that man was made in the image and likeness of God. He is made in the image as true from the True, as eternal from the Eternal, though he is not without beginning but is without end; he is made in the likeness as good from the Good, as wise from the Wise: by the gift of grace he was what God is by nature. As the image of God, every being is reasoning; as the likeness, only some are good and wise.

26. Every reasoning and thinking being is divided in two, that is, into angelic and human beings. The whole angelic world is in turn divided into two chief moral groups and parts: into the pure and the impure, that is, into the holy powers and the unclean angels; while the whole human race is divided only into two parts, that is, into the godly and the ungodly.

27. For God, as Being in Himself, good in Himself and wise in Himself, or, to put it more exactly, as the Being above all, there is nothing opposite. But for creatures, as existing only by participation and by the gift of grace — even for the most reasoning of them, who have the gift of goodness and wisdom — there is something opposite, namely: being and non-being, the gift of goodness and wisdom, and evil and ignorance. Their eternity or non-being is in the Creator’s power, while partaking or not partaking of God’s grace and wisdom depends on the will of the reasoning creatures.

28. The Greeks, supposing that the nature of creatures was from the beginning with God and that from God they received only their qualities, said that to the nature of creatures there is nothing opposite, but that the opposite is only in their qualities. But we assert that to the one whole divine nature, as eternal, boundless and giving eternity to all other beings, there is nothing opposite. But to the nature of creatures non-being is opposite, and their eternity or non-being depends on the will of God Himself. But since the grace of God is unchanging and cannot be taken away, the creature will be what it always was; though it too, clothed in the almighty power to come, has, as has been said, its own opposite — non-being, since it has been brought by God from non-being into being, and it is in God’s will whether it shall be or not.

29. Every creature either reasons and thinks and has within itself the opposites, that is, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, or else it has various bodies with an opposite composition, such as: earth, air, fire and water. The first is wholly bodiless and immaterial, though some of them are joined to a body; the second consists only of matter and outward form.

30. Every body is without the power to act; bodies act by means of the soul. Some act by a reasoning soul, others by an unreasoning one, and others by one without feeling.

31. Among the powers of the soul some feed and make to grow, others represent and devise, and finally others reason and think. Of the first plants partake; of the second, together with the first, the animals; and of the third, together with the first two, man. The first two powers are corruptible, while the third is incorruptible and immortal.

32. The holy powers, passing on enlightenment to one another, pass on to human nature too the goodness and knowledge that exist in them. By goodness is meant the goodness made like God’s, by which they do good both to themselves, and to one another, and to beings below them, and thereby make them pleasing to God; and the knowledge they pass on is that God is above all, for “Thou, O Lord,” says the prophet, “abidest for ever” (Ps. 91:9). They either teach something deeper about bodily beings, or something more exact about bodiless ones, or something clearer about providence, or something more definite about judgement.

33. The ground of the mind’s viciousness is, first, wrong knowledge; second, ignorance of what is necessary for all (I say this of the human mind, since partial knowledge does not belong to angels); third, passionate thoughts; fourth, the desire for sin.

34. The soul is vicious because it does not act according to its nature, and therefore passionate thoughts are bred in it. And the soul acts according to nature when, under the working of things upon its passionate powers, that is, upon anger and desire, and under the thought caused by this, it remains dispassionate.

35. The viciousness of the body is sin committed in deed.

36. He loves silence who does not strive after the earthly; he loves all people who loves nothing human; and he has the knowledge of God and of divine things who is not scandalised either by another’s fall or by a thought of suspicion roused through another.

37. It is important not to have a passion for things, but it is far better to be dispassionate when thinking about them.

38. Love and self-restraint keep the mind dispassionate both in dealings with things and in the thought of them.

39. The mind of one who loves God fights not against things and not against the thought of them, but against that passion which accompanies thoughts; that is, it resists not the woman, not the one who has grieved him, and not their images, but the passions that accompany these images.

40. The monk’s fight against the demons consists in separating the passions from thoughts, since without this he will not be able to look upon things dispassionately.

41. One thing is the object, another the thought and a third the passion. For instance, the object is a man, a woman and the rest; the thought is the dispassionate representation of them; the passion is either an unreasoning love for them or a thoughtless hatred. It is with such passions that the monk fights.

42. A passionate thought is compound, since it consists of a passion and a thought. Let us separate the passion from the thought — and the blameless thought will remain. If you want this, separate it by means of spiritual love and self-restraint.

43. The virtues separate the mind from the passions; spiritual contemplation, from petty thoughts; and pure prayer brings it to God Himself.

44. The virtues were made for the sake of knowledge, knowledge for the sake of the one who knows, and the one who knows for the sake of the hidden Object of knowledge, who leads above knowledge.

45. The all-sufficient God brought creatures from non-being into being not because He somehow needed this, but so that they, according to their own capacity, might become partakers of divine blessedness and rejoice. And God Himself rejoiced over His works, since He saw them glad and filled with inexhaustible joy.

46. In the world there are many poor in spirit, but not poor as they ought to be; many who mourn, but over the loss of property or of children; many humble, but because of unclean passions; many who hunger and thirst, but so as to seize unlawfully what is another’s and to grow rich by gain; many merciful, but to the flesh and to what is of the flesh; there are also the pure in heart, but out of love of honour; there are peacemakers too, but who enslave the soul to the body. Many are persecuted, but for their own wickedness; many are reviled, but for foul sins. But blessed are they who labour and suffer for Christ and for Christ’s sake. Why? “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven” and “for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:3, 8), and so on. They are blessed not because they labour and suffer in this way, since those named above do the same, but because they labour and suffer for Christ’s sake and for Christ.

47. In every action of ours, as has been said many times, God looks at the aim: whether we do it for Him or for some other reason. Therefore, when we want to do something good, we should set as our aim not the pleasing of people but the pleasing of God. We must look to God always and do everything for Him; otherwise we shall labour in vain and shall deserve punishment.

48. During prayer drive from the mind both the petty thought of human affairs and the contemplation of created things, so that, dreaming of what is small, you may not fall away from Him who is boundlessly better than all beings.

49. If we truly love God, then by this love we shall root out the passions too. And true love of God means preferring Him to the world, and the soul to the body, which is shown in the renunciation of earthly things and in dedicating oneself to God; and this is self-restraint, love, prayer and psalmody.

50. If we attend to God for a long time and carefully care for the passionate part of the soul, then at the assault of thoughts we shall no longer turn aside from the right road, but shall understand their causes exactly and cut them off; we shall become watchful, so that the prophetic words will be fulfilled in us: “And my eye has seen my enemies, and my ear shall hear of those that rise up wickedly against me” (Ps. 91:12).

51. When you see that at the thought of the world your mind acts in a godly and right way, know that your body too is pure and sinless. But when you see that the mind is occupied with sinful thoughts and you do not cut this off, then know that your body too will not delay to fall into the same sin.

52. As for the body there is a material world, so for the mind there is an imagined world; and as the body commits adultery with the body of a woman, so the mind commits adultery with the body of an imagined woman by means of its own imagined body, for in imagination it sees its own body together with the body of the imagined woman. So too it repays in thought the one who grieved it, whom it pictures to itself. The same happens with the other sins, since what the body does in deed in the material world, the mind does by thoughts in the imagined world.

53. Should not the mind be horrified, troubled and amazed when “the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgement unto the Son” (John 5:22), and the Son says to us: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1), “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged” (Luke 6:37); and likewise the apostle says: “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come” (1 Cor. 4:5), and again: “Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself” (Rom. 2:1)? Then, I ask you, if this is so, why do people leave off weeping for their own sins, take from the Son of God the right of judgement and, as if sinless, judge and condemn one another? Heaven is angry at this and the earth shakes, while they, having lost feeling, are not ashamed of it!

54. He who is occupied with other people’s sins, or who judges his brother on the ground of suspicion, has not yet laid the foundation of repentance and has not laboured to know his own sins, which are truly the heaviest burden; and such a person does not know why he is “hard of heart, loves vanity and seeks after lies” (Ps. 4:3). For, being senseless and walking in darkness, he forgets his own sins and, on the ground of suspicions alone, thinks about the sins of others, real or imagined.

55. Self-love, as has been said more than once, is the cause of all passionate thoughts, since from it are born the three chief thoughts of the desiring part of the soul: gluttony, love of money and love of honour. Gluttony is followed by the thought of fornication; love of money by that of gain; love of honour by that of pride; while all the rest, for instance the thoughts of anger, of remembrance of wrongs, of despair, of envy, of slander and others, are the result of these three. These passions press upon the mind like a heavy stone, bind it to material things and bend it toward earth, whereas the mind by its nature is lighter and finer than fire.

56. The beginning of all the passions is self-love, and the end is pride. Self-love is the thoughtless love of the body; whoever cuts it off cuts off all the passions born of it as well.

57. As parents according to the flesh love their offspring, so the mind is by nature attached to its own thoughts; and as to a partial parent his child seems the best brought up and most advanced, whereas in fact it may be worse than others, so to a senseless mind its own thoughts seem the wisest, though they may be the most foolish. But the wise man does not count his thoughts so; even when their truth and goodness are confirmed, he all the more distrusts his own judgement, but makes the wise the judges of his thoughts and reasonings — whether he “has run and is running in vain” (Gal. 2:2) — and from them he receives confirmation.

58. When you defeat some unclean passion, for instance gluttony, or fornication, or the love of gain, at once the thought of the love of honour will fall upon you. And when you defeat that too, the thought of pride will overcome you.

59. When all the unclean passions take hold of the soul, it drives out of itself the thought of the love of honour; but when it conquers them, it lets that thought enter the soul.

60. Love of honour gives birth to pride, which is sometimes rejected and sometimes accepted. When it is rejected, a high opinion of ourselves is formed in us; when it is accepted, a feeling of haughtiness takes hold of us.

61. He who has become worthy of the knowledge of God and has truly partaken of His sweetness hates every pleasure that is born of the power of desire.

62. Love of honour is cut off by hidden labour, and pride by ascribing to God the deeds rightly done.

63. One who is ruled by earthly desires craves either food and drink, or the satisfying of sensuality, or human glory, or riches, or something else that follows from these; and if the mind does not find anything better than these things, to which it could transfer its desire, then to the end of his life he will not be able to hate them. And better than they is the knowledge of God and of divine things.

64. People renounce various pleasures either out of fear, or for the sake of hope, or on knowing their nothingness, or else out of love for God.

65. The knowledge of divine things without love for them does not convince the mind to the end to renounce the material wholly, and it keeps the desire for things of sense. Therefore not a few such people may be found who know much, but who, like a swine in the mire (2 Pet. 2:22), are seized by fleshly passions. For such a person, at a time of some faithfulness to good, received the knowledge of it only in part, and afterwards, growing slothful, became like a soul which had become worthy of a royal throne but was cast down from it in dread wrath for an unworthy life.

66. As unseemly thought about human things makes the mind despise the divine, so a small knowledge of the divine does not convince it to renounce the human wholly, since truth here abides in shadow and is subject to judgement; therefore the faithfulness of pure love is needed, which joins the mind to spiritual knowledge and persuades it to prefer the immaterial to the material, and the intelligible and divine to the things of sense.

67. Not everyone who has cut off the passions and made his thoughts sinless has yet transformed them into divine ones; he may be faithful neither to the human nor to the divine. So it is with people of the active struggle. They have not yet become worthy of knowledge, but abstain from the passions either out of fear of torments or for the hope of the Kingdom of Heaven.

68. “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). And our faith is as yet like a shadow and a riddle. Therefore we must exercise ourselves in knowledge, so as by long study and diligence to gain the unfailing ability to contemplate the eternal.

69. If, having for a time overcome the causes of the passions, we occupy ourselves with spiritual contemplation alone but are not always occupied with it, we shall again easily fall under the influence of fleshly passions and shall gain from it no profit but bare knowledge, which is accompanied by a high opinion of ourselves, and whose result is the gradual darkening of knowledge and the final turning of the mind toward material things.

70. The passion of love which is blameworthy occupies the mind with material things, while the passion of love which is praiseworthy binds it to the divine; for whatever object the mind usually fixes its attention on, to that it will submit; and to whatever it submits, thither it will direct the desire of love: either to the divine, together with the thoughts proper to it, or to fleshly things and passions.

71. God created the invisible and the visible world, and He also created the soul and the body. And if the visible world is so beautiful, what then will the invisible be? And if the invisible is better than the visible, how great then is God, their Creator? And if the Creator is better than every creature, for what cause has the mind left the Best and is occupied with the worst — with fleshly passions? Plainly because it has grown used to this, has had dealings with it from birth, while what is best and highest it has not yet come to know. So if, through long abstinence from the pleasures of sense and progress in the divine, we little by little drive out this habit, then the mind will strive toward the divine, will know its own worth and will finally turn all its faithfulness toward God.

72. He who speaks of a brother’s sin without passion does so for two reasons: either to correct him, or to bring profit to another. But if he speaks with him or with another not for these aims, then he is slandering or judging his brother. Such a person is inevitably abandoned by God. He will certainly fall either into the same sin or into another and, reproved and condemned by others, will be put to shame.

73. We should not judge alike those who have committed one and the same sin, but differently (according to the causes of the sin), since one sins from habit and another unwillingly, from an uncontrollable impulse; in the latter case a person did not even think about the sin before committing it, nor had any attachment to it after sinning, but on the contrary grieves greatly and is tormented by what happened. This is not felt at all by one who sins from habit, since he was already sinning in thought before committing the sin and after committing it remains in the same state.

74. He who performs the virtues out of love of honour seeks knowledge too for the sake of love of honour. But such a person no longer does or says anything for the instruction of another, but tries to make everyone who sees his deeds and hears his words see his glory. Such people are shown up when their deeds and words are put to shame and they are greatly grieved — not because they instructed no one, since that was not their aim, but because they were humbled and insulted.

75. A sign of the love of money is when someone receives with joy and gives with regret. Such a person cannot be a true steward.

76. One who suffers bears trial for the following reasons: either out of love for God, or in the hope of reward, or out of fear of torments, or out of human fear, or from natural endurance, or from the thirst to be first, or for the sake of gain, or out of love of honour, or out of necessity.

77. It is one thing to be rid of thoughts and another to be freed from the passions. People are often freed from the passions when they do not see the things toward which they have a passion. But in spite of this the passions hide in the soul and, when the things appear, come to light; therefore we must watch the mind in its relation to things and find out toward what it has a passion.

78. A true friend is one who does not abandon his neighbour in the time of trial, but bears the trial, hardship, misfortune and sorrow that have fallen upon him without any turmoil or alarm, as his own.

79. Do not reject conscience, always the best counsellor for you, for it offers you the counsel of God and the angels, frees you from the hidden defilement of the heart and, after your departure from this world, rewards you with being with God.

80. If you want to be intelligent and at the same time humble and not to be enslaved to the passion of pride, always seek in things what is hidden from your mind; and when you understand that much is unknown to you, you will acknowledge your own ignorance and humble your own wisdom. And with the knowledge of your own nothingness you will come to know many great and wondrous things. But the fancy of one’s own knowledge will not bring you progress in knowledge.

81. He truly wants to be saved who does not resist the healing means; and these means are the trials and sorrows caused by various misfortunes. He who resists trial knows neither what trading goes on here, on earth, nor with what gain he will go from here.

82. Love of honour and love of money give birth to one another, since some grow rich out of love of honour and others, having grown rich, become lovers of honour. So it is in the world. But a monk is a lover of honour when he has no possessions; and when he has silver, he hides it and is ashamed that he has a thing unfitting to his rank.

83. The honour-loving monk takes vain pride in the virtues and their fruits; the proud one prides himself on his successes, despises others and ascribes to himself what he has from God. The honour-loving and proud layman takes vain pride and prides himself in beauty, in riches, in strength and in the power of judgement, or in the good things of this life.

84. What is success for a layman is a fall for a monk, and what is success for a monk is a fall for a layman. The layman’s success is riches, fame, power, amusements, many children and the rest, having which a monk will perish. The monk’s success is poverty, obscurity, self-restraint, toil, hardship and the like, the unwilling falling of which upon him the lover of the world counts a great misfortune, and he often goes so far as to want to put his head in a noose, and some even do so.

85. Food was created for two purposes — for nourishment and for healing. Therefore those who take what God has given for our profit not for its purpose and not as they should, like the sensual, will be punished. Likewise every wrong use of things is a sin.

86. Humility is born of pure prayer, accompanied by tears and grief. For it (prayer) always calls on the Lord for help and does not allow one to rely on one’s own strength and wisdom or to look down on others, which are two dreadful sicknesses of the passion of pride.

87. It is one thing to fight against a thought so that it may not awaken a passion, and another to fight against a passionate thought so that we may not consent to sin. Both these kinds of fighting give us no right to accept thoughts.

88. Grief accompanies the remembrance of wrongs. So when in your mind, as in a mirror, you look with anger at the image of the brother who has insulted you, then it is clear that you have anger against him. “The wicked are destroyed by their own way” (Prov. 12:24), “for the lamp of the wicked is sin” (Prov. 21:24).

89. If you are angry with someone, pray for him; by prayer you will forget the grief caused by the evil he has done you, and you will stop the working of the passion, since, having become friendly and loving to people, you will drive the passion wholly out of the soul. And when someone is at enmity with you, be kind and humble toward him, live with him in goodness — and you will free him from the passion.

90. The grief of an envious man is hard to calm, since he counts as his misfortune what he envies in you. He can be calmed only by hiding it from him. If what you have is profitable to many but brings him grief, how should you act? It is fitting to choose what is profitable to many, but as far as you can not to disregard the envious man either. Do not be carried away by the craft of the passion; stretch out a helping hand not to the passion but to the one tormented by it; in humility count him better than yourself, let him always be above you, everywhere and in every work. And your own envy you will be able to calm if you become a partaker of the joy of the one you envy and grieve with him over what he grieves over, for so you will fulfil the commandment of the apostle: “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” (Rom. 12:15).

91. Our mind is under the influence of two powers, each of which suggests something to us in its own way: one good and the other evil, that is, one is an angel and the other a demon. But the mind has the power and the right to yield to or to resist whichever it wishes.

92. The holy powers move us toward good, while the natural seed of good and a good will help us. But to the offspring of the demons passion and an evil will give strength.

93. The pure mind is taught by God Himself; sometimes the holy powers suggest good to it, and sometimes the contemplation of the nature of things does.

94. It befits a mind that has become worthy of knowledge to keep, in its relation to things, blamelessness of thought, sinlessness of gaze and untroubledness of prayer. But because of the working of bodily needs, which through the efforts of the demons darken the mind like smoke, it will not always be able to keep this.

95. We are not angry at everything that grieves us, since we are more often saddened than angered. For instance, when something of ours is broken, or lost, or someone dies, we only grieve; but at other times, when we are in an unfavourable disposition, we both grieve and are angry.

96. The mind, when it thinks about things, is usually changed according to each thought; and in their spiritual contemplation it is transformed according to each contemplation. But when it is with God, it is not changed at all, since, contemplating the Unchanging, it too becomes unchanging and full of light.

97. Perfect is that soul whose power of desire strives wholly toward God.

98. Perfect is that mind which, having by true faith invisibly come to know the Invisible, has seen all His creations and has received from God an all-embracing knowledge of the providence and judgement of God existing in them, as far as this is accessible to a human being.

99. Time is divided into three parts (present, past and future). Faith embraces all three parts; hope one (the future); and love two (the present and the future). Faith and hope have limits, but love, joined to the Infinite and ever growing, abides for ever. And therefore “the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13).